The One Dayer: For a mountain of productivity | Business Tips for Insurance Agents

Published on July 20, 2017

Back in college my friends and I would occasionally decide to pull an all-afternoon-N-nighter (because all morning was just too much to ask of college kids).

The purpose wasn’t because we necessarily all had a huge project due the next day. The point was that we got a lot more done in those few hours of extreme focus together than we regularly did on our own for an hour or two at a time. Sometimes we would bust out a whole half-a-semester’s worth of work in one sitting for a class because we worked together in an uninterrupted space of focus.

When’s the last time your team, whether that’s one or one-hundred of you, got together to pull a day-long “We’re gonna get Sh*t done” session?

For many of us, it’s been too, long — that is, if we’ve ever done something like that in the first place.

The co-founder of Twitter and current CEO of Medium, Ev Williams, is a big believer in this type of occasional group-focus method. Williams sees constraint as a catalyst for focus and productivity.

That type of condensed, focused time with your team is the same reasoning behind 24 hour whatever-a-thons and team retreats. In that uninterrupted space, your normal communication lag-time (email delays etc), and sporadic focus (switching between many projects in any given day, or hour) that happen in normal work life are neutralized and everyone can zero in on project.

As in: “Should we do a one-dayer on this on Thursday?” When might you say this? Perhaps: When you’ve been kicking around an idea for a while, have discussed several different directions, but aren’t sure which is best yet. When you have a project that’s been going for a while and you just want to get it out the door (and it’s not inconceivable to do it in a day). When you have a crazy hunch you can’t get out of your head. It might even make sense to have a one-dayer at the beginning and end of big projects.

The same can be true for you, even if you’re the sole worker on your team. Block off a day on your schedule to not check emails, not answer the phone, and just focus in on that idea you really need, or that project that needs to get done.Next time you need that mound of productivity, schedule in a “one-dayer” and see what happens.

Abram Interstate Insurance Services, Inc. is a California wholesale insurance broker (CMGA) that has licensing and expertise to place business in both admitted and non-admitted markets for personal lines insurance and commercial lines insurance in California and surrounding areas.